Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Series | Book | Chapter

211485

Monism, racial hygiene, and national socialism

Heiner Fangerau

pp. 223-247

Abstract

On Ernst Haeckel's eightieth birthday, his private secretary Heinrich Schmidt (1874–1935) edited a festschrift entitled Was wir Ernst Haeckel verdanken ("What We Owe to Ernst Haeckel").1 Although not all of the contributors were members of the German Monist League or 'standing on monist ground,"2 the list of contributors from all over the world reads like a "who's who" in science and monism on the eve of the First World War. It represented the full diversity and conflictive range of monistic stances at that time: for example, scientific celebrities like the German-American mechanist physiologist Jacques Loeb (1859–1924), his holistically oriented scientific opponent Max Verworn (1863–1921), the racial hygienist Wilhelm Schallmayer, and the social reformer Rudolf Goldscheid contributed to the book. Produced at the peak of the monist movement, the book reflected the differing aspects of monism, which led to the implosion of the Monist League as a result of the war experience3 and which would persist through the Weimar Republic. Loeb stated in his short contribution that he had tried to develop a monistic approach in the life sciences that reduced all life phenomena to their physic-chemical essence. In congratulating Haeckel, he mentioned that he had consequently been exposed to systematic criticism from reactionary Darwinists, which had long prevented his participation in the monist movement.4

Publication details

Published in:

Weir Todd H. (2012) Monism: science, philosophy, religion, and the history of a worldview. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Pages: 223-247

DOI: 10.1057/9781137011749_10

Full citation:

Fangerau Heiner (2012) „Monism, racial hygiene, and national socialism“, In: T. H. Weir (ed.), Monism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 223–247.